Not doing the job

“THEY are good figures, we should celebrate,” said Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, after data released on April 23rd showed the country’s recovering economy had created close to half a million jobs over the past year. Many Spaniards were feeling less than festive. Since the euro crisis hit in 2010, Spain’s astronomical unemployment rates have vied with Greece's for first place in Europe; they have fallen from a high of 27% in 2013, but slowly. Indeed, the unemployment rate increased slightly in the first quarter, to 23.8%. And in the working-class Madrid neighbourhood of Vallecas the figures did nothing to lift the gloom.

“Without the money my father gives us from his pension we would be lost,” says Elsa Carmona, a 39-year-old mother of two. “That's how it is for many families—six people living off one person's income.” Her husband, a former construction welder, recently found a job gardening for nine hours a week, but it does not cover their €800 ($867) per month mortgage. Like many of their neighbours in this, one of the Spanish capital's poorest districts (where one in five are jobless), Ms Carmona's family receives no state money. Her husband's unemployment benefits ran out a year ago. They received a small payment from the regional government of Madrid for a few months, but that has also ended.